Vila-Matas's New Book

I can’t access the full review (yet), but according to Stephen Mitchelmore at This Space the new issue of the TLS has an interesting review by Nick Caistor on Enrique Vila-Matas’s Dublinesca. Here’s an interesting bit that Stephen pulled out:

Vila-Matas insists that there is a “moral contract” between writer and reader, and that the reader should be active, showing a “capacity for intelligent emotion, a wish to understand the other person, and to get closer to a language that is different from that of our daily tyrannies”. He goes further, declaring that: “the same skills needed to write are also needed to read. Writers can fail readers, but the reverse is also true, and readers fail writers when all they look for in them is a confirmation that the world is exactly how they see it”. In spite of all the playfulness therefore, the game of literature is the most serious and urgent there is.

Vila-Matas is a personal favorite—his Montano’s Malady is pure genius—so I’m excited to find out more about Dublinesca. And I did hear from Declan at New Directions that they signed this book on, so it will be available in English at some point in the future. In the meantime, ND is bringing out Vila-Matas’s Paris Never Ends sometime next spring (?). Can’t wait . . .